Research Fellow - Microbiology

School of Biomedical Sciences (Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry)

Biography

Qualifications

I obtained my PhD at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale (France) in 2013. My doctoral thesis and postdoctoral fellows were dedicated to antibacterial and antibiofilm compounds. Currently, I am a research fellow at the University of Plymouth where I work on new antibacterial compounds to bridge the gap on antibiotics discovery pipeline.

Professional background

Since Sept 2017: Postdoc at University of Plymouth-ISTMed (UK). Mat Upton Group. A new pipeline of first in class antibiotics template on the bacteriocins.

2013- 2014: ATER (non-tenure-trackassistant professor) at the University of South Brittany, Lorient (France). Impact of marine associated bacteriaon the sponge Suberites domuncula.

Educational Background

-PhD in microbiology at the University of Western Brittany (France)

-Master’s degree “Valorisation desBio resources” at the University of South Brittany with honours.

Research

Research interests

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens our modern medicine directly, resulting in non-effective treatments for an increasing number of microbial infections but also indirectly as antibiotics underpin most of our current medical procedures (hip replacement, chemotherapy, organ donation…). Among the priorities raised to fight AMR, the reinvestment into antibiotic research discovery is a well-recognized element. According to the Pew’s most recent analysis of the antibiotic pipeline (June-2018), within the 42 antibiotics in development, fewer than 1 in 4 compounds belongs to a new drug classes or present a new mechanism of action. Knowing that the FDA will approve approximately only one drugs out of five that reaches the initial phase of clinical testing, one can understand the requirement for new drugs in the pipeline. My research interests are on antibiotics from their discovery, their mechanism of action to their pre-clinical evaluation.